


forever after days (wrap me in the banner i made)

by vulpesvortex



Category: Warrior (2011)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:03:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulpesvortex/pseuds/vulpesvortex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe it’s time for something new, something better. Something more sustainable than hate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	forever after days (wrap me in the banner i made)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hardlygolden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlygolden/gifts).



> _forever after days, stand and make myself a crown  
>  to the table i step alone, hold my own above the ground  
> take my shot under the light, heroes come a common way  
> pull myself into the sky, wrap me in the banner i made_
> 
> Forever After Days, **The National**

****After the fight, Tommy spends a couple of hours in surgery and a week in hospital.

Brendan supports him out of the cage, whispering and murmuring against his neck as they stumble through the crowd. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tommy realizes they must both be crying, and everything – _everything_ \- is wrong. Such a mess, FUBAR all the way, fucked up beyond all recognition. By the time they get to the ER, he’s being carried more than supported and he’s not conscious enough to care. Given the beating his brother took over the past two days, it’s probably even impressive.

Most of it passes in a daze of painkillers and aching limbs.

The MPs come and go. Brendan sends a lawyer to field his charges. His father sits by his bed for a few hours, mercifully silent, then finally fucks off. Tommy refuses to talk to any of them. The lawyer leverages his ‘heroism’ and the loss of his brothers-in-arms to buy him some goodwill with the higher-ups , and in the end, he gets to walk for the small price of a dishonorable discharge and forfeiting his owed back-pay.

Brendan comes by to share the news, awkward and apprehensive at first, unsure of his welcome. Soon, he finds that Tommy is too wrung-out to argue, drained of anger and purpose to leave only apathy, and sits closer.

He talks for a bit, alternating between remorse and exultation, explaining. Brendan talks about the house he fought for, about Tess and the kids, and apologizes, and asks about the pain, skipping from subject to subject as if afraid Tommy will order him out if he runs out of words. “I couldn’t give up,” he says, searching to meet Tommy’s eyes. “I’m not expecting you to care,” he adds apologetically, obviously having learned his lesson at the beach – though things have changed, haven’t they?

Tommy stares back, unwavering. He feels too empty to do anything else.

Brendan sighs, perched on the edge of Tommy’s hospital bed, staring uselessly at his hands in his lap. “I just want to explain. I’m sorry.”

If Tommy were a different man, he might have appreciated the poetry in their predicament: one man with everything to lose, and another, who had already lost everything. Desperation overtaking desperation. As it is, Tommy’s never had much use for dressing things up prettier than they are, and the truth of the thing is, the truth is -

 _He lost._

***

When the doctors discharge Tommy from the hospital, it is agreed that he will stay with Brendan for a while.

It’s no surprise when Brendan offers to look after him, to put him up until he can find a place and a job and figure out what to do with himself. Brendan’s been coming by most days, still suspended, watching him with soft, worried eyes that can’t help but annoy Tommy. Sometimes he brings Tess, who’s pretty and tough and taller than he remembers from the old days. She’s nervous around Tommy, around Tommy and Brendan together, but not much more than they are themselves.

Everyone has been walking on eggshells around each other, avoiding this subject and that. With the pile of issues between them, it’s a miracle they manage to talk at all.

It comes as more of a surprise when Tommy accepts, not least of all to himself.

***

The third morning Tommy wakes up in his brother’s house, there’s a weight across his legs and someone is poking him in the chest. He looks down his body to find two big, dark eyes regarding him curiously from beneath a curtain of brown curls.

“Wake up, Uncle Tommy,” she giggles, sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed.  “Mommy says  breakfast is ready.”

There is a child sitting on his legs.

Tommy, still too muddled from sleep and the worn-off painkillers to process this information, stares. “How did you get in here?”

“Through the door,” Emily says, the ‘duh’ clearly audible. She’s got a lot of sass for a six-year-old.  

“You must be hungry, right? Last year I had to go to the hospital to get my tonsils out and the food was really icky. I wasn’t really hungry because I was only there for a day and I had to eat ice cream. Did they make you eat ice cream at the hospital?”

She reminds him of Pilar and little Manny and Maria, and the promise he made them.

“Hmm,” he says, non-committal, levering himself up. He tries not to let out a pained whimper at the pressure it puts on his ribs.

Emily grins at him conspiratorially, eyebrow tilted in a way that clearly says she’s doubting his reputation as a tough guy. The expression gives him a strange sense of déjà vu; it takes him a moment to realize she must’ve picked it up from her dad.

 “Don’t look so worried, it’s just pancakes.”

  
***

They put Tommy up on a cot in the study, which soon morphs into an actual bed when he doesn’t bail on them within a week. Apart from paying off their mortgage, it seems to  be the only thing Brendan has spent the prize money on, medical bills for both of them and lawyers notwithstanding.

Most nights, Tommy gets peckish  around 11, ravenous around 1 – the result of a childhood spent on high-carb diets catching up with his metabolism somewhere in his 20s – which, by the way, was a bitch in the Corps, living off MREs in the desert and always feeling famished.

There are some crackers in the cupboard, some jelly in the fridge, but sadly no left-overs from dinner. It’s not so hard, though, even with his arm out of commission, to scrounge up something passable in the dark. Tommy learned to make do a long time before the Marine Corps came along.

He’s trying to get one of the crackers to stay still while he spreads peanut butter on top, something complicated considerably by the fact that he has exactly one working hand, and it’s holding the knife. The cracker skitters across the counter and lands next to his foot on the cold kitchen floor with a crunch- _splat_.

“Hey,” Brendan says, and the lights flicker on suddenly.

“You alright?” he asks, and Tommy finds himself torn between nodding, sighing and snorting.

He settles for not saying anything at all.

“Here, let me.” Brendan picks the cracker up off the floor and chucks it into the garbage can, and hip-checks Tommy down the counter. He picks up the knife and starts on the three remaining ones, hands moving sure and easy as he glances at Tommy. He smiles at him, and the look is knowing. Understanding.

“Here,” he says as he passes Tommy the first of the crackers. He’s still smiling, amused, but it’s not an unkind expression. “I’ll tell Tess tomorrow to make dinner for six.”

“Thanks.”

“I could make some eggs if you like? Probably be better than this dry crap.”

“No, I’m alright. Marines make do.” Tommy finds himself grinning back. “Look at you, eh, like a regular All-American Dad. All you need now is an apron.”

“I try my best. Would you prefer if I put one on?”

“To be honest, I don’t think I’d survive the sight.”

“You sure? I do aim to please, you know, and I think you could use a laugh or two.”

Tommy barks a laugh then, feeling looser than he has in ages, despite the bruises and the bum arm. “That I could,” he says, soft. It’s the first time he can remember since he was five and saw his father break his mother’s arm in front of him that he feels like maybe he could let the past be the past.

“You should see the videos from the girls’ birthdays. Last year Emily wanted a costume party and I had to dress up as Prince Charming. You know, the one from Shrek? This year it was only face painting, thank god. Tights are, um, not a good look for me.”

When their eyes meet, they both burst out laughing, and by the time their amusement dies down to shuddering breaths, their eyes are watering.

“I don’t know Shrek,” Tommy gasps out on a puff of held breath, clinging to the counter to stay upright.

“Stick around for a few more weeks, I’m sure Emily will fix that.”

Tommy’s pretty sure their laughter could be heard throughout the house, but he can’t muster enough care to feel apologetic about it to anyone they might have woken. The world is very quiet like this, the two of them alone in the kitchen. Brendan sits on the counter, watching him, seemingly alright just waiting for Tommy to speak despite the faint aura of anxiety surrounding him.

Tommy finds he’s quite comfortable, and that , too, is a surprise.

“So, why are you even up, huh? Missus kick you out?” Tommy asks, if only to break the loaded silence that had settled on them.

“Nah, couldn’t really sleep. Tess sleeps like a log, though.”

Tommy picks at one of the abandoned crackers, stuffing one into his mouth and tossing the other aside. He hoists himself up the counter next to his brother with one arm, groaning as the movement pulls at his bruised ribs (and all the other parts of him that hurt like a bitch).

“Tom-!“

“Shut up, I’m fine.” Tommy says, not harshly. It sounds like old times.

It sounds fond.

“What about you? Were you just hungry, or?”

Tommy thinks about the nightmares. Thinks about falling asleep and being 7, and feeling his father’s hot whisky-breath on his face and being confused. Thinks about falling asleep and being 15, and feeling his mother’s rattling gasps drag at her ribs under his hands and feeling  helpless. About falling asleep and being 26, surrounded by death and the desert and he doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t know what to do, _he doesn’t know what to do_. He thinks about the nightmares and how saying ‘it was just a dream’ never helps because it wasn’t, none of it was, it’s all real, and says:

“Yeah, just hungry.”

***

Four nights later, Tommy starts awake from another nightmare, and is relieved when he no longer feels like every inch of his body is on fire. Instead, there’s the familiar low-level ache that goes down to his bones, a signal that he has once more returned from the cage to the present.

He lies on his back for a while, trying to calm his breathing and go back to sleep. Eventually, he gives up and nudges the sling back over his shoulder before sitting up.

It’s amazing how noisy the calm quiet of the house makes small things: the door creaks on the way out, the rush of the tap loud in the kitchen when he goes to get a drink of water.  He’s drained most of the glass before he notices a shadow hunched in the arm-chair in the living room, pausing with the glass still to his lips. A bit spills out over the edges, soaking his shirt, and he curses as he wipes his good hand across his chin.

Brendan is watching him. It’s hard to tell in the dim moonlight, but the corners of his mouth seem to be pulled up into a smile.

“Hey,” Tommy whispers, setting the glass down with a distracted _clunk_ before walking over, “what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Right. ‘Cause this,” he motions at Brendan’s slumped posture and the darkened living room, “is totally normal midnight behavior.”

“Nothing s _erious_ , I mean.”

“What then?”

“Just, nothing. I keep thinking about the fight, and then I can’t sleep.”

Brendan’s head snaps up when Tommy huffs out a laugh. “Well, that makes two of us then.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I have nightmares, you know. Mostly about Iraq, but other things too sometimes. Pops beating Mom, that sort of thing. Pain in the ass, they are.”

 “I’m sorry,” Brendan says, words tight in his throat and sounding like he means it.

“Not your fault, is it? I could’ve stopped when I-… I could have stopped, but I didn’t.”

Brendan nods, eyes closed, as if he’s trying not to remember.

“Beaten by a physics teacher,” Tommy snorts, desperate to change tracks. “Speaking of, how the fuck did you ever get to be a physics teacher, anyway?”

“What do you think? Sports scholarship,” Brendan says, deadpan. “It’s not like Pop ever found a dollar he couldn’t turn into whisky.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.”

“Oh.” Brendan’s face does something interesting then, trying to shift around a number of emotions all at once, eventually relaxing into a sigh. “Tess made me promise to stop after a UFC fight nearly killed me.”

“That’s what you get for being such a stubborn bastard.”

“Like you’re not.”

“Ha,” Tommy snorts indelicately and lightly punches his brother’s shoulder. He’s fairly sure he doesn’t hit any bruises.

A silence settles over them, not completely uncomfortable, and Tommy takes the moment to study the living room. Though currently covered in midnight gloom, the chairs look plush and welcoming, the table cluttered with knick-knacks, and the whole place has a lived-in feel to it. His eyes skate over the fridge in the kitchen, covered in Emily's first scribbles and CMU magnets (a left-over from Brendan's college days), to the stairs just around the corner, leading up to the bath- and bedrooms. Upstairs, all is quiet, undisturbed by their midnight congregation. Yet, the air lacks the stillness of an empty house; instead, it seems warm and full, even with most of the inhabitants asleep in their beds.

“You’ve made a nice life for yourself here,” Tommy finds himself saying after a while, and it doesn’t sounds as bitter as he expects it to. He tries not to think about how much _nicer_ it will be when they start breaking into the 5 million in their savings account.

Brendan watches him, a curious look in his eyes. He averts his eyes, though, when he says:

“It’s got a place for you in it, if you want it.”

 _What do you think I’m doing here?_ Tommy thinks briefly, before realizing that he himself doesn’t really know what he’s doing here, staying with the brother he’d pinned most of his hate on for the past 15 years.

His brother, who doesn’t so much have _everything_ as all the good parts of everything; the one who had Dad’s indifference and the grades and the girlfriends, instead of 5 AM training sessions and diets and more bruises than Tommy knew what to do with. The one who has the wife and the money and the glory and the house, while Tommy has been making do with broken memories of their mother’s last cancerous months and his dead comrades and the MPs, prison, shame, a cot in his brother’s study. 

For all the reasons he should hate him - has hated him - he finds he doesn’t want to anymore.

There are a lot of things he could say to that, and in the end, he doesn’t go with any of them.

In the end, he says: “Fuck, I’m tired,” because it’s the only thing he’s sure is true.

“Then you should go back to bed,” Brendan says, running a hand over his face in exhaustion. His eyes are sad, with dark bruises underneath that Tommy doesn’t think are a trick of the light. Combined with the cuts and the swelling on his face, he looks like shit.

At the door, Tommy hesitates. All these years anger has kept him standing and now that all of that has flowed out of him, he feels off-balance, undone, like his skin got put back on the wrong way round.  Maybe it’s time for something new, something better. Something more sustainable than hate.

“Brendan.”

His brother’s head comes up again, hopeful. He looks very alone in his arm-chair, marooned in the middle of the room. “Yeah?”

Tommy smiles, not with his mouth, but with his eyes.

“I’ll think about it.”   


End file.
